Newsletter - Winter 2007
Looking back
An exciting but arduous 2007 season, our busiest yet, has seen productions of four different operas in ten venues as well as a growing concerts programme. The local van hire company has been kept in business, as have our hardworking but ever cheerful Bampton ‘crew’ volunteers, Mike Wareham and Anthony Hall. As a predominantly open-air company, we keep a careful eye on the weather charts, but this year we do seem to have had our more than our fair share of weather-related trials, as you will understand if you read on.
Beornwald may not be the best-known name in the Anglican roll of saints, but is of course Bampton town’s own illustrious patron – obscure maybe (male or female? seventh- or ninth-century?) but now a little more celebrated since we rescued him (her?) with our annual feastday concert in St Mary’s church. Unfortunately 21 December is not usually blessed with temperate weather, and we have beseeched our friendly Bampton expert historian, Dr John Blair, to find us a Feast of the Translation of the Relics, or similar, preferably when it’s warm, but to no avail. In the past we’ve suffered from extreme cold, ice and, last December, fog. The fog was actually in Barcelona but so was our counter-tenor, David Clegg, and so too was his plane. David had been much looking forward to singing something other than the usual round of December Messiahs but it wasn’t to be and it became clear, with less than 24 hours to go, that we had to find a replacement. Long hours on the telephone resulted in the unhelpful statistic that every other counter tenor in the land was indeed singing Messiah that night; the solution proved easier, however, as David’s mezzo girlfriend Ruth Massey saved the day and performed with acclaim that evening having never seen the music until noon on the day. The concert was themed A Baroque Christmas and featured music by Caldara, Kuhnau, Gibbons and Michael Haydn; it was the first in a newly-focused series of concerts designed to be of comparable artistic quality to our summer operas. Ruth was joined by Amanda Pitt, Serena Kay and the Bampton Baroque Players for a memorable evening of rare but delightfully seasonal music.
Our main production was the UK première of Georg Benda’s exquisite 1776 Singspiel Romeo and Juliet which received seven performances at four different venues and with three orchestras: Buxton, for the prestigious opera festival, with the Northern Chamber Orchestra; Bampton and Westonbirt, with our own orchestra; and St John’s Smith Square, with the London Mozart Players. Previewing the Bampton performances, The Independent newspaper warned on Thursday 19th July that “getting there isn't easy, and when you do, you have to brave the elements – if it's raining, the show moves to the church” - prophecy indeed! Final rehearsals took place as planned on the open-air stage in the Deanery Garden in blazing sunshine: the Stage Manager ran to Budgens to buy sunscreen for the cast, and Victorian costumes topped by sunhats and sunglasses made an unlikely spectacle. But soon after the dress rehearsal that Thursday evening the deluge started, and within a few hours on Friday Bampton was marooned and many residents were engaged in a desperate battle against the rising floods. With the village cut off, we did what we could to put on our performance in the church (only the second such occasion since 1993). Half the orchestra and most of the audience couldn’t make it through the floods but, for those who deserved a medal for reaching us, the show went on. Shortly before the performance several loud bangs signalled the dramatic demise of the village electricity supply: a gathering of church candles lit the stage with an appropriately eighteenth-century theatrical ambience but proved insufficient for conductor Matthew Halls who, deprived of his orchestral players, was faced with the unexpected and at that moment gloomy prospect of playing the church upright piano from a conductor’s score. Help came from a member of the audience, who drove his car up to the church porch and ran a halogen lamp from his battery! Not surprisingly the performance proved memorable, and Juliet’s funeral scene in which her body was processed through the dark church by black-cowled monks was intensely moving. And was it divine intervention which restored the electricity supply at the split second when Juliet wakes in the tomb in time to prevent Romeo’s suicide (for this is Romeo and Juliet with a happy ending)? – no wonder that Romeo’s next line was “Oh, God!” By Saturday the power had been restored and several more audience made it through the floods but again not enough of the orchestra so Matthew played again. He must be the only Bampton conductor not to have actually conducted at Bampton but the events served only to demonstrate his outstanding musicianship.
Westonbirt performances fortunately met with glorious weather, large audiences and superb playing from our orchestra who were relieved to be at last playing after two thwarted attempts. All was almost well a couple of weeks later in London, but Ian Priestley, our aptly-named Brother Lorenzo, found himself stranded in Amsterdam (or rather, the plane he was meant to be on was grounded in Luton), and only made it to London in time to go on in the second half - fortunately his first half appearances involved speaking but no singing, and so he was hastily replaced by director Jeremy Gray, making his unexpected Bampton stage debut.
Nevertheless, whatever the difficulties, Benda’s music emerged unscathed with the glorious singing of Joana Seara, Ilona Domnich, Mark Chaundy and Adrian Powter, and the immaculate visual styling provided by set-designer Nigel Hook and costume designer Pauline Smith. True, some regretted the absence of comedy, which has been such a feature at Bampton over a sequence of several years, but the intensity and beauty of this important score we hope more than compensated for the lack of laughs.
Earlier in the season we launched two new enterprises in London . Especially worthwhile was an education project with schoolgirls from Queen’s College, working alongside tenor Tom Raskin and leading to two performances in February of the eleven-year old Mozart’s first (and quite delightful) opera Apollo and Hyacinth – it can’t be often that teenage soloists get written up in such glowing terms in Opera magazine. In May at St John’s , again with the LMP, we gave a semi-staged concert performance of Mozart’s rare orchestration of Handel’s Acis and Galatea, the first of a projected occasional series of concert performances of operas.
We also ventured into new territory with a small-scale touring production, a revival of our 2005 production of Haydn’s L’infedeltà delusa (a marvellous comedy which has also done the rounds this autumn with English Touring Opera under the title Country Matters). Accompanied by the incomparable Kelvin Lim at the piano, we visited three festivals across as many counties: Wantage Concert Club in April, Music at Wotton in May and two performances at the Thaxted Festival in July. There was also a fifth performance - which required strict advance secrecy – at the tiny theatre at Buscot Park , courtesy of Lord and Lady Faringdon. The occasion was the diamond wedding party of our patron Sir Charles Mackerras and Lady Mackerras. Their daughter Cathy had assembled family and friends and, remembering her father’s previous enjoyment of our work, booked us for a memorable private performance kept secret from her parents until the very end.
Sir Charles Mackerras with singers from L’infedeltà delusa
Our orchestras
Our regular audience will know that our summer productions involve two different orchestras. The Orchestra of Bampton Classical Opera is an Oxford-based group of musicians who have been working with us from our early years. Several players enjoy the event so much that they arrange their summer holidays around our dates. Our orchestral manager Felicity Cormack plays in the violin section and we are so grateful for her work – often arduous and frustrating - and for her enthusiasm in bringing people together each year.
For the past four years we have also built up a strong relationship with the London Mozart Players. Their playing in Romeo and Juliet this year was second to none, and many of their players comment warmly on our choice of repertory and the quality of our singers.
Our special interest in the eighteenth century does however suggest that we might also work with period instruments and we are now establishing a further band, the Bampton Classical Players, which we hope to feature in opera performances outside Bampton and London, as well as in occasional concerts. You will get your first chance to hear a group of these exciting young players, managed by Camilla Scarlett, in Bampton on St Beornwald’s day.
Looking ahead
Vivaldi by Candlelight is the theme for this year’s annual St Beornwald’s day concert, on Friday 21 December. Camilla Scarlett and the Bampton Classical Players perform Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and are joined by soprano Gilly French in the sparkling coloratura motet Laudate pueri and by mezzo Serena Kay for a series of virtuoso arias from the composer’s little-known operas. An irresistible mixture of the familiar and unfamiliar which will appeal to everybody - book immediately to avoid disappointment! Remember that the December cold is quickly alleviated by mulled wine, and the ambience at this concert is always seductively warm! Tickets are £10, available from 01367 860574 or on the door.
In 2008 we are planning two main opera productions including Ferdinando Paer’s Leonora and also a number of other events which are still evolving.
With Leonora(ossia L’amor conjugale) we creep into the nineteenth century: it may prove our most exciting and challenging project to date and is, we believe (as with Romeo and Juliet) a UK première. Written in 1804, it was the second opera to be written about a passionate escape story set in a (thinly-disguised) French revolutionary prison. At about the same time, Beethoven was also impressed by the same libretto and a year later saw the première of his only opera, renamed Fidelio in order to avoid confusion with Paer’s already popular work. Beethoven’s score passed through many revisions emerging eventually in what is now considered the definitive edition of 1814, and one of the cornerstones of the operatic repertory. Paer’s work may lack the deep intensity and solemnity of Beethoven’s monumental (but problematic) achievement, but it is a very rewarding and powerful opera in its own right, bursting with melody, energy and a typically Italian panache. As in several Mozartian operas, the ‘noble’ love of the prisoner Florestan and his courageous wife Leonora is contrasted with the ‘low’ and tempestuous love of Giacchino and Marcellina. The story combines unexpected comedy when Marcellina falls for ‘Fidelio’ (actually Leonora in disguise) with the excitement of Leonora’s risky enterprise to outwit the machinations of the prison governor Pizzarro. Paer, born in 1771 in Parma , was a significant and controversial composer in the generation before Donizetti and Bellini, and Leonora shows the beginnings of the bel canto style which was to become such a glory of the nineteenth century in Italy . Following our collaboration on Romeo and Juliet, Brian Clark of Prima la musica! is creating a performing edition for us. In addition, although plans are far from settled, and may depend on finding suitable sponsorship, we hope to support our production with a fascinating London concert comparing aspects of the Leonora/Fidelio operas by Beethoven, Paer, Giovanni Simone Mayr and Pierre Gaveaux.
Dates are still under discussion but provisionally Leonora will come to Bampton on 18 and 19 July 2008 and to St John’s , Smith Square on 17 September. Our second production, a double bill including Mozart’s Apollo and Hyacinth, will appear at Westonbirt over the August bank holiday weekend as well as at one or two other venues. Please see our website, www.bamptonopera.org, for further details as well as our Spring mailing – if you would like to be added to our free postal or email lists, do let us know.
“An excellent plot, very good friends” (Shakespeare, Henry IV, part 1)
Sadly we have not yet located a rare opera of Henry IV, but as a company we do pride ourselves on our excellent plot, and we greatly value our very good Friends. But we would like more! Like all arts organisations we depend on support from all directions and our Friends scheme is a direct way of belonging to our extended family and keeping us performing at a high standard. Over the years our Friends have provided about a third of our required income, but performing costs are ever rising, even though the company’s overheads and administration are kept to a tiny minimum. Several existing Friends have commented on the way we look after them and make them feel loved, so there are both direct and indefinable benefits of membership. If you join now there will be an invitation to what is always a really delightful evening in Cobb House, Bampton, to alleviate the post-Christmas gloom. Please consider this vital way of supporting a vibrant and rewarding company. Contact Michael St. John Parker, our Friends’ co-ordinator, for details: telephone 01993 851219; email friends@bamptonopera.org
Situation vacancy
We may be the only professional company in the country to run entirely on voluntary administration and the scale of the work which is undertaken by our board of trustees is enormous and ever-growing. The time has come to devolve some of these tasks and we are now looking for a paid part-time administrator to take these over. The exact nature of the work can be adjusted to suit the successful candidate but will include administrative support for the Friends and artistic directors, running the mailing list and, possibly, a certain amount of people- and funding-nurturing, especially in Oxfordshire. A regular but flexible commitment of a few hours per week will be required and there will be appropriate remuneration. Basic computing skills, good organisation, enthusiasm, commitment, independence and initiative are vital. This is a vital post, which we see as playing a key role in moving the company forward in an ever competitive arts and financial world. If you would like to find out more, please contact Jeremy Gray at the company address or by email.
Conductor’s corner
In the latest in this occasional series about members of the company, Murray Hipkin, conductor of Falstaff in 2003 and La vera costanza in 2004, tells of something of the path to his musical career.
I remember bumping into my head of music from school when I was about 28. On hearing that I was a member of the Music Staff at English National Opera he replied that he’d known all along that I would end up as a repetiteur and conductor. I was lucky enough to go to a school with a very strong choral tradition and although I probably could have developed a reasonably decent voice, I was very self-conscious about singing so was quite relieved when, at the age of about 13, I was asked to accompany choir rehearsals. I think it was then that I learned how to sight-read fearlessly and follow a beat no matter what.
But while I was a student I don’t think I gave opera or conducting a thought. True, my forward-thinking schoolmaster got me to conduct Mozart’s Bastien & Bastienne when I was 15 but I was seriously out of my comfort zone, which definitely lay in accompanying. Around that time I also had my first experience of working with professional singers when I met mezzo-soprano Annette Thompson (now Professor at the Guildhall). “Coach me” she ordered one day, plonking a Duparc song on the piano. “What’s coaching?” I replied. “What you’ve been doing for the last four weeks!” she said. So I did.
I did a degree at York where I managed to get a 2.1 by writing only one essay, restoring a square piano, playing some Clementi on it and directing a perfectly dreadful production of Acis and Galatea. Next was the Accompanists’ course at the Guildhall where I ended up spending 90% of my time playing for singing lessons and opera rehearsals. Of course, with hindsight, it was a wonderful grounding but at the time I felt slightly cheated. When Johanna Peters (then Head of Opera) said to me “Darling you are rather good at this, you should go to the Opera Studio” I could see no reason to resist, so that’s what I did. Alongside singers such as Joan Rodgers, Kim Begley and Geoffrey Dolton I learned the basics of coaching and repetiteuring. It so happened that English National Opera were starting up a scheme for Trainee Repetiteurs. I was the first one, working on productions of The Valkyrie, Ariadne auf Naxos and The Tales of Hoffmann. Nothing like the deep end, but I must have done something right as Mark Elder gave me a fulltime job at the end of the three month contract. Invaluable experience with other companies followed – I spent three seasons with Opera Factory – but it was Mark who really taught me the job.
Apart from a spell of freelancing in the early 90s, I have been with ENO ever since. My first experience with Bampton came about because Paul Daniel was encouraging me to get some conducting experience outside ENO. I wrote about sixty letters and, as a result, Gilly and Jeremy invited me to conduct Salieri’s Falstaff and I was back the next year with Haydn’s La vera costanza which I also co-translated with Gilly. Shortly after that I was offered my first shows at the Coliseum. So far I have notched up 17 performances over the last four seasons (The Pirates of Penzance, The Mikado, The Gondoliers and Kismet). The great thing about taking over a show is that you don’t have to bother with rehearsals and for your first night everyone’s on your side as they are usually fed up with the regular maestro by then and glad of a change.
So my teacher was right. I have always said that I want to be a repetiteur who conducts rather than a conductor who plays occasionally and I still feel that way but theres’s no doubt that Bampton came along at a crucial time in my development as part-time maestro and although the Deanery lawn is a long way from St Martins Lane in more ways than one, I can never be grateful enough to Gilly and Jeremy for their amazing vision and commitment to young artists (I think I can still just about describe myself as a ‘young’ conductor!) and their extraordinary knack of unearthing unknown masterpieces. After a couple of years away from Bampton I am very much looking forward to a new association with the company as casting advisor and to whatever the future might hold.
